Gordon Totty

Gordon was born August 5, 1938, in Barnsley, England, a hard-working coal-mining town in Yorkshire, just before the outbreak of World War II. He remembered his family’s backyard bomb shelter and victory garden, and watching the iron railings being cut from his house as scrap for the war effort.

Smart and artistic, Gordon did well in school, though he occasionally got into trouble for drawing cartoons of the teachers. He went to night school to complete a chemistry degree, and by his early twenties was an industrial chemist at the Star Paper Mill in Barnsley. At 24, he worked up the courage to emigrate to America to seek a better life in the booming plastics industry.

He settled in the small town of Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and worked for Borden Chemical Company, which provided his children’s schools with an endless supply of Elmer’s Glue. When Borden left Massachusetts in 1987, Gordon accepted a transfer to Baton Rouge, which became his adopted home for the rest of his life. He lovingly embraced the local lingo, calling any win “lagniappe” and sizing up road trips with “oh, that’s about a two-beer drive,” all delivered in an unplaceable Yorkshire-Bostonian accent.

Along the way, Gordon pursued passion projects and side businesses that he seemed to enjoy more than his corporate day job. In the early days of the internet, he taught himself e-commerce and website design and founded Cajun-Shop. com – selling Louisiana foods and gifts online. He ran the business for twenty years, until his illness made it impossible to continue. From the 1970s through the 1990s, he was a “picker” of rare paper Americana and sold antiquarian books through a mail-order catalog. A talented sketch artist, he also tried his hand as a freelance cartoonist for national magazines.

Gordon was funny and loved to make people laugh. Even as his memory began to fail, his mind was continually setting up jokes, even if he couldn’t always reach the punchline. His brother Andrew reflected, “He took with him a dry sense of humor that was widespread in post-war Britain — if you can’t fix it, you can at least poke fun at it.”

Calm, considered, and low-drama, Gordon was a natural leader and caretaker, with a soft spot for people who were struggling. This instinct extended to animals, too. Visitors were greeted joyfully by his many rescue dogs (if not by his decidedly less friendly cats).

He was a Renaissance man with an adventurous streak: an avid photographer with a good eye, a whiz at science and math, an amateur historian of the American Revolution and Civil War, and he even spoke a little Russian. He enjoyed skydiving until his future mother-in-law made giving it up a condition of the marriage. On a surprise birthday trip to Europe in 2008, at age 70, he fearlessly rode a Segway through the heart of Paris traffic, dodging buses alongside the young’uns.

Gordon was preceded in death by his mother Nora Annie (Peel) Totty; Father Wilfred Totty; brother Alan; and former wife Diane (Kirkbride) Totty.

He is survived by his half-brother Andrew Taylor; son Brian Totty and wife Shernaz Daver, of Los Altos, California; son Jeffrey Totty of Berkeley Lake, Georgia; step-grandsons Jai and Rohit, and granddaughter Carina; many nieces, nephews, and cousins in England.

As of now no memorial service will be held at this time.In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that memorial donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association in loving memory of Gordon. Your thoughtful contributions will help support Alzheimer’s research ,care and the ongoing search for a cure.

Website: www.alz.org